Monday, February 28, 2011

Remember, the only thing that pulled us from the brink in 2008 was Bernanke printing like a lunatic. It’s the ONLY thing that has held the market together. And while it may have kicked off a major rally in stocks… it FAILED to address the underlying issues that caused the Crisis in the first place: namely excessive debt and leverage.

In fact, Bernanke has made the financial system even MORE leveraged than it was in 2008. So if the Fed’s moves no longer have an effect on the markets, then it’s time for the REAL Crisis… the Crisis to which 2008 was a warm up.

One thing most people know about Ayn Rand is how she railed upon the weak who took government hands-outs, the mooches who leeched off the superior elite. But she got a sobering dose of reality in her old age, when she found out she needed hand-outs in order to pay the medical bills to fight the lung-cancer she claimed cigarettes won’t give you (because government research is always wrong, remember).

But who can blame her… her entire ideology was centered on being self-serving, and I believe she earned it. She was right to do it… it just basically invalidates any philosophical integrity she might have.

But who reads Ayn Rand besides pseudo-intellectuals who imagine themselves as part of that superior, alpha-male culture that is modeled by Ayn Rand after a serial killer?

I am pro-life. By this I mean that I am against abortion in most case, except when a woman’s life is in danger. Even then, science may be able to develop technology to get around this problem with artificial wombs.

I’m sure this comes as no shock to anyone, seeing as how I am Christian. However, I do take a different stance on fighting abortion than most prominent pro-life people. I’d rather address the causes of the supposed need for abortion, rather than abortion itself. Sexual promiscuity are the primary reasons for abortion and I believe that if women were to not devalue their marriage market value by being promiscuous, then many abortion clinics would go out of business.

Of course, this plan breaks down due to the government subsidizing abortions by funneling money to groups like Planned Parenthood. The new Republican Congress has finally brought this issue up after decades of silence from the so-called moral majority oligarchs who have run that party.

For years, the Republicans have had the opportunity to take a stand and stop government subsidies that went to a controversial group like Planned Parenthood and they did nothing. From 2002-2006, they controlled all relevant branches of government and did next to nothing about it. I confronted a state delegate about it and he said he didn’t want to shut down the government over this issue. Talk about moral cowardice.

The truth is, politicians are opportunistic slimeballs and will pay as much lip service as they can get away with. For the Republicans, the past couple of decades has been about social issues like abortion. The pro-life movement is the Republicans as the black civil rights movements are to the Democrats. They have a seat at the table of power but they aren’t allowed to speak.

Still, this whole idea of removing subsidies for Planned Parenthood has nothing to do with abortion or morality really. This has everything to do with fiscal sanity. From what I understand, they are supposed to be a non-profit organization after all, yet they continue to post profits in the millions. One-third of their funding is from the Federal government.

To be fair, none of the government subsidies they receive are supposed to be allocated for abortions. But this line of logic reminds me of the time when we gave Katrina victims a $2000 debit card, which many then spend on booze and strippers. In other words, you can tell them not to spend that money on abortions, but that doesn’t mean they won’t.

I heard former actor and talk radio show host today Jerry Doyle talk about how the Republicans in Congress were sent there to clean up fiscal matters and not deal with moral ones. Unfortunately, he is wrong in his assessment on this. The truth is, this does clean up fiscal issues. I know it’s probably a small scratch in the fiscal insanity that our overlords in DC have created, but the Federal budget will be fixed by a thousand cuts, not one decisive blow. That is the unfortunate truth of the matter.

In the end, cutting funding to Planned Parenthood is just one more step in the right direction, regardless of the morality behind it. Depriving all non-profit organizations of Federal dollars will reduce the deficit, regardless of whether we like or not. In the end, this is just one more thing that needs to get done.

What’s odd is… someone who doesn’t even believe privacy exists outside of the creative minds of human beings is the one pointing this out in a supposedly skeptical blog which claims to concern itself with infringements on individual liberties.

I just point it out because the measure is borderline Gestapo (if they make illegal immigrants wear a gold star, I’ll be getting my attic fit to live in and stocked with diaries). I would solve the whole mess by just granting amnesty before eliminating quota laws and waiting lists in order to document immigration. Need to hassle people: gone.

But let’s suppose you’re an idiot who doesn’t understand the economic benefits of immigration in a low-fertility population. I am of the opinion that most people who want to deport illegal immigrants also want the government to get off our backs… but they also don’t think it’s torture if you waterboard an Arab.

The Middle East protests have fueled more than just a change in Democracy; it looks like these political outbursts will affect the gas pump as well. There are reports that crude oil could rise up to 200 dollars a barrel. Director of the Trends Research Institute Gerald Celente says the role of the Federal Reserve, interest rates and the potential oil crisis out of the Middle East could be detrimental to the United States economic recovery.

Calvin Tillman, the mayor of the town of Dish, Texas is moving out after natural gas drilling has made his town unlivable.

It all sounded so appealing. The nice men at the gas company assured them they were experts who knew what they were doing and that the process of removing the gas from the ground (called fracking) was safe. The money was a welcome boom for a sleepy little town that had gone so far as to change its name to Dish in order to get a deal with a satellite TV provider (no joke).

But then the problems started to creep in… or rather seep up through the ground. The air took on an acrid smell, the water was flammable, and people started getting unexplained nosebleeds. Tillman moved his family away after his son suffered a nosebleed that hospitalized him.

Ahh, companies… they don’t have to care about anything anymore. Good old deregulation. Conservatism you can smell.

Every once in a while, you've got to clear away the toxic waste by posting something, anything.

My favorite comment on this video was this: "I'd dive too﻿ if I was being recorded for no﻿ reason."

It reminds me, though, of my childhood. Our (that is, my sister and I) parents always tried to do little things to keep us entertained when we were young. One was going out to eat somewhere where the experience was about more than just stuffing our little faces (though I remember enjoying that, too), and we had regular restaurants we would go to. One was a seafood place, with its own little artificial lake (I say lake, because they advertise it as such, it's really more like a giant pond) out back. The pond/lake was occupied by a whole lot of ducks, and a few geese. They had vending machines with duck food, but you could also bring your own bread or whatever. So, sometimes before, but usually after, our meal, we'd head behind the restaurant to feed the ducks. That was our big thrill of the night. If you threw some popcorn (what those vending machines had at first, later switching to some kind of pellets) into the water, the ducks would go diving for it, often several of them at once. This video just reminded of that and brought some of those fond memories back.

What did one duck say to the other when the first one said how nice it was of people to throw them bread? "Yeah, but it's always stale!"

I don't know why feeding ducks seemed to be such a big thing back then. One time we went to visit my aunt and her husband and my two cousins. They lived a ways north of us, so when we got there, when it was time to "do something" and leave their apartment, my aunt grabbed a huge plastic bag full of old bread she'd been saving and off we went in their station wagon to the local lake to "feed the ducks".

I was able to write an entire post about Obama and liberals were able to chime in with their problems with him... but as soon as anything is said about the right, in come the comparisons to people on the left (which never match up in severity).

I submit that the right is completely and utterly incapable of self-assessment or critical thinking, that their bias is blatant and that they should shut the fuck up.

You can start by not responding to this and only giving it low ratings, you inarticulate dumb fucks.

Tom Woods discusses the Associated Press article, "Tea Party Vision for Montana Raising Concerns." People in Montana have adopted unconventional views about how to reverse federal encroachments. We are supposed to be concerned about this, instead of about the encroachments themselves.

This is my favorite, this is from [Democrat] representative William McChesney, he says, during the sovereignty declaration debate..."I say to you, this is America, love it or leave it."

So he digs up this old right-wing slogan, that he's now gonna use, and there it is, that's what's happened to progressivism. The progressives are now all nationalists. For some reason they think nationalism, in spite of the whole testimony of the twentieth century, nationalism is a progressive force.

Well, whatever happened to "question authority", which is what the people in Montana are doing? "Question Authority" has given way to "Shut up and obey!" And whatever happened to "Small is beautiful"? Well, apparently that only applies to gardening or something. But Small Is Beautiful does not apply to politics, because 309 million being governed infallibly by one city, well, that's just the right size.

Sunday, February 27, 2011

It’s been a fun day on the internet. I got to help take part… I mean innocently witness the taking down of the Koch Brother’s website as the fight for unions in Madison was joined by Anonymous (the amorphous group of online vigilantes who have been defending WikiLeaks, ridiculing Scientology, and making fun of the families of kids who kill themselves).

It’s fun, watching the youth of today work themselves up into the politically active malcontents of tomorrow. While I hate most of you fossils who limp through here regularly, my 27 year old self is downright ancient compared to those who orchestrate these sort of “attacks” (it’s more like a virtual sit-in than an attack).

This largely teenage hodge-podge of outcasts, nerds, geeks, dorks, dweebs, and losers have made themselves a force to be reckoned with, not in the actual damage they do, but in the attention they can bring to an event (though in the case of the already hyped Madison protests, Anonymous is small potatoes and their involvement will probably go largely unnoticed).

I don’t know how anyone can see some of the things going on in the world and not feel compelled to really do something. Not post a stupid video where somebody else gets angry, or quote from an editorial written by a do-little desk jockey without any real connection to reality.

It’s not enough for me to read about someone who says they have their thumb on the pulse of the nation, I want to stick a needle in its vein and shoot it so full of speed it wakes up from the fast food and beer coma (Charlie Sheen, we need whatever the hell you’re on).

It’s not about convincing yourself or anyone else that you’ve done anything, because pride and prestige mean fuck all in the face of oppression. It’s about at least trying. Most people have given up, especially the tired old yuppies. The day you stop trying to change what’s wrong with the world is the day you’ve become part of the problem.

The first two sentences of the "Dishonest Abe" chapter of The Constitution in Exile are hard hitting: "The Abraham Lincoln of legend is an honest man who freed the slaves and saved the Union. Few things could be more misleading." He then goes on to say exactly what Ron Paul told the Washington Post, and which seemed to mystify and confuse Tim Russert in his "Meet the Press" interview with Congressman Paul: "In order to increase his federalist vision of centralized power, 'Honest' Abe misled the nation into an unnecessary war. He claimed that the war was about emancipating slaves, but he could have simply paid slave owners to free their slaves . . . . The bloodiest war in American history could have been avoided." And, as Ron Paul would likely add, all the other countries of the world that ended slavery in the nineteenth century, including Britain, Spain, France, Denmark, the Dutch, did so without a war. This, by the way, included the Northern states in the U.S. There were no "civil wars" to free the slaves in Massachusetts, New York (where slavery existed for over 200 years), or Illinois.

Lincoln's "actions were unconstitutional and he knew it," writes Napolitano, for "the rights of the states to secede from the Union . . . [are] clearly implicit in the Constitution, since it was the states that ratified the Constitution . . ." Lincoln's view "was a far departure from the approach of Thomas Jefferson, who recognized states' rights above those of the Union." Judge Napolitano also reminds his readers that the issue of using force to keep a state in the union was in fact debated -- and rejected -- at the Constitutional Convention as part of the "Virginia Plan."

With nothing more than a swab of saliva, security officials can use the device to obtain genetic intel in less than an hour. The results reveal personal details about one's ethnicity, race and lineage. Current DNA tests can take several weeks.

"This can be done in real time, with no technical expertise," Richard Selden, the executive chairman of NetBio, the company that devise the scanners, told The Daily. "DNA information has the potential to become a part of the fabric of day-to-day life, and this facilitates that process."

...

Jim Harper, the director of information policy studies at the Cato Institute and a member of the DHS privacy committee, called the technology a game-changer, and one that officials are rolling out too hastily.

"There's going to be a rapid migration into collecting more DNA from more people," he said. "We're plunging into the unknown here."

Obama discusses unrest in New Hampshire (Parody, Libya, Egypt). A little remixing to give you a sense how hypocritical the Tyrant-in-Chief's Libya speech was. About half of this video was shot in New Hampshire, where the pro-accountability revolt has been going on for years but is smaller than the one in Bahrain.

More than a few people have asked me where I stand on the controversy between Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and the public employee unions against which he is contending.

I favor the union thugs, not the government thugs. For me, it’s like Stalin versus Hitler: a pox on both of them. But, I like to root for the underdog, the weaker of the two bad guys, and that’s the union in this case. I do so because I want the fight to long continue, so that both are weakened as much as possible. The state has more guns, better public relations (they have bought off more journalists, intellectuals, clergy, and others of Hayek’s “second hand dealers in ideas”) than the unions.

So, if we want the battle to weaken the both of them, we must support, ugh (no, double ugh!) organized labor. Also, it is my judgment that the government is a worse violator of human and economic liberties than are the unions, bad as are the latter.-Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker Versus the Public Employee Unions

The essence of Block's argument is that this is not a battle of less government versus more government, but a battle over who controls the loot. There is a strong anti-public employee union stance by advocates of freedom, which is great, but somehow this anti-union attitude is being transferred into support of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. Despite heavy propaganda otherwise, Walker is not a free market guy.-Economic Policy Journal.

Obama should resign. He is a fucking corporate whore who deserves to be tarred and feathered on pay per view, with the proceeds going to the people his budget is fucking over.

I am so sick and tired of people on the right complaining about Obama for all the wrong reasons. Obama is a horrible president (not as bad as W, it’s tough to tell compared to Clinton… though he’s on pace to blow Clinton out of the water). None of you Retardicans should be doing anything but kissing Obama’s ass. If you voted for McCain, you should be doing fucking backflips over Obama’s decision to be your go-to bitch.

Obama might as well go out of his way to get himself assassinated, because that’s about the only way his legacy is going to survive intact.

Obama has not only carried on the wars, he has expanded the use of unmanned predatory drone (aka pussy drones) in a third country, Pakistan. Of course, he said this and I pointed it out a year ago. I’m shocked Obama came through on one of his promises…

I’m pissed about Obama, no doubt about it, but I can’t imagine how people who voted for him feel. Most I have talked to are completely in denial, and most cannot point to three tangible things he has accomplished, and the one or two they can name are invariably minor token actions

Usually, they mention allowing gay people to fight and die for the country that hates them, or begrudgingly declaring DoMA unconstitutional after a Republican congress has been seated… and very little for the +90% of us who aren’t gay or billionaires (no wonder Hollywood loves him).

But there are people willing to stand up for themselves on the left, and they’ve taken to the streets in a way the Tea Party never could (you know… sans oxygen tanks). There is no slick media campaign for it, there is no trendy name for it (yet), and there is opposition for it from both the left and [mainly] the right.

It has all the makings of a real people’s movement, and I hope it is the nucleus for a real third party, a real party for liberals, and a real party for people who had to get a job because their daddies weren’t rich.

Saturday, February 26, 2011

This is a question I've wanted to ask for a long time. Unlike many of my posts, this isn't here just to be provocative and rile everyone up. I'm sincerely wondering:

Are you willing to bet your entire future on the fluctuations of the marketplace? That is, are you willing to unconditionally accept whatever outcome is given to you, even if it results in you being dirt poor or simply dead?

Please note that I'm not asking if you think you'll end up poor or dead, but whether you would accept the outcome if you did.

Obama’s new budget is a continuation of Wall Street’s class war against the poor and middle class. Wall Street wasn’t through with us when the banksters sold their fraudulent derivatives into our pension funds, wrecked Americans’ job prospects and retirement plans, secured a $700 billion bailout at taxpayers’ expense while foreclosing on the homes of millions of Americans, and loaded up the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet with several trillion dollars of junk financial paper in exchange for newly created money to shore up the banks’ balance sheets. The effect of the Federal Reserve’s "quantitative easing" on inflation, interest rates, and the dollar’s foreign exchange value are yet to hit. When they do, Americans will get a lesson in poverty.

Now the ruling oligarchies have struck again, this time through the federal budget. The U.S. government has a huge military/security budget. It is as large as the budgets of the rest of the world combined. The Pentagon, CIA, and Homeland Security budgets account for the $1.1 trillion federal deficit that the Obama administration forecasts for fiscal year 2012. This massive deficit spending serves only one purpose--the enrichment of the private companies that serve the military/security complex. These companies, along with those on Wall Street, are who elect the U.S. government....

...All we need is a few million more Americans with nothing to lose in order to bring the disturbances in the Middle East home to America.

With the U.S. military bogged down in wars abroad, an American revolution would have the best chance of success.

This week, President Obama decided to deflect attention away from his mounting failures by declaring that the Defense of Marriage Act was unconstitutional and that the Justice Department will no longer contend it in the court system. Naturally, all those on the Christian conservative Right went bat-shit crazy and completely and utterly forgot about the more important issues facing our nation, such our misplaced priorities in foreign policy and our growing fiscal insanity. Obviously, the ploy worked.

While I consider the whole matter a minor issue, there are some fundamental observations I’d like to make about this whole non-issue because even in the mundane there are kernels of wisdom:

Firstly, I’d like to point out that within the scope of the Western world, homosexuals make up maybe two percent at most. I know the lie that we’ve all been told that its about ten percent, but that comes from the lying sexual deviant known as Alfred Kinsey. Kinsey was a man whose sexual activities went far beyond basic sodomy and was more obsessed with bugs than people by trade. This is significant because a person’s personal beliefs and biases will always permeate their research. In any case, given that this is the truth, that gays and lesbians make up no more than 2% of the population, why is there so much fuss over them?

Why the Left-wing Statists continue to impose their circular morality upon the general populace is beyond me. When I say “circular morality” what I mean is that we have a special interest that wants to change the moral code, which is defined by the State in their view. However, the leaders of the State are elected by those very people. And round and round it goes. Seriously, why do you need the State to justify your actions?

While I was opposed to gay marriage for a while, I never really understood what marriage really was. Now that I do, I oppose marriage as defined by the State entirely. The fact is, marriage licenses were originally issued to prevent Mormons from engaging in polygamy. This was around the mid-1800s, though I couldn’t give you a specific date and my estimation could be off along with my reasoning. I admit this is more educated guessing than actual historical research because I really don’t care all that much about the history. My general point is to contend that the State has no business in the personal relationships of individuals any more than it has any business in the health of individuals.

From my perspective, having the State act as an arbitrator in marriages only serves to cheapen what I view as a sacred union between two people. Marriage is largely a religious covenant in the Western world, and throughout much of the known world in spite of modern movements and ideologies. It is not something that individuals should enter into lightly, as so many have done, and it is not something you should simply give up when you’re unhappy. You want something that isn’t so confining then simply don’t get married. Heck, if anything, gays have more freedom in not getting married because they won’t lose half their stuff when one of them decides to move on to greener pastures, which is at least just as likely as straight marriages. This of course assumes that gay relationships are the same as straight relationships, as we keep on being told.

Finally, the Defense of Marriage Act was constitutional, President Obama and Attorney General Holder’s opinion notwithstanding. What the act does is say that states do not have to recognize marriage licenses from other states or other countries if they choose not to. It asserts that the several states maintain their own sovereignty, which is supported by the 10th amendment. The legislation itself is supported in Article IV Section 1 of the United States Constitution. Regardless, it doesn’t matter because a State can simply state that the Federal government has no standing on this matter and not be forced to recognize contracts they don’t want to. In other words, the several states are allowed to nullify unconstitutional acts of the Federal government in the spirit of Thomas Jefferson.

Truth be told, whatever the outcome of this mess, it won’t matter all that much. I do not believe that this civilization was built on monogamous, heterosexual marriage, as so many Christian conservatives claim because that claim never has sat well with me. Of course, that’s another blog post for another time.

We are all in danger. A police state control grid is being established in the United States. Now is the time for all lovers of liberty to stand together and speak out against the growing tyranny destroying our republic.

Unions are private organizations, which is supposedly something you libertarian shit-for-brains love so much. It enables groups of workers to stand up to the slave-maker, without using that dreaded “government” you all hate so much.

So why are you numb-nuts so pissy in your pants over unions?

Oh right, because you’ve been told you hate them.

Fucking twat waffles, all of you. There is no point is trying to present my view on the matter, only my utter disdain for your deplorable and baseless views.

Eat shit, you fucking cunts. Enjoy being wrong as real people rise up against the propagandists you worship.

The greatest scam in history has been exposed -- and has largely been ignored by the media. In fact, it’s still going on.

The specifics of a secret taxpayer funded “backdoor bailout” organized by unelected bankers have been revealed. The data release revealed “emergency lending programs” that doled out $12.3 trillion in taxpayer money ($16 trillion according to Dr. Ron Paul) -- and Congress didn’t know any of the details.

In Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s writings on problems with democracy, he points out that one advantage of monarchy over democracy is that there is a clearer distinction between the ruler and the ruled; so that if the monarch starts to become despotic, he can at least in principle be killed or removed from power. At least the people know who to aim their ire at. In democracy, the state is bureaucratized and distributed, and the line between ruler and ruled is blurred–because citizens can vote, they accept the propaganda that “we are the government.”

Recent protests in Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, and Yemen help illustrate this–there, the people are fed up with rule by brutal strongmen, thugs and dictators, so demand their ouster. Success is not guaranteed but the people at least have a target for their anger. In the western democracies, protests of this type are inconceivable. Half the country voted for Obama, so there would never be mass protests. And he’ll be out of office in 2 or 6 years in any case, so why bother protesting to kick him out a bit earlier. And even if he is somehow ousted, he’ll be replaced with another plastic man. While regicide is possible with a monarchy or even dictatorship, it’s not so easy to decapitate a democratic state; it’s more like a hydra. The most we can expect in a democracy are protests by special interest groups demanding more loot from the state (such as the pathetic protests by the state teachers’ unions in Wisconsin) or reform of a particular law (such as medical marijuana or gay marriage). And when 5% of the populace pays most of the income tax, don’t expect widespread protests against confiscatory tax rates.

This is not to say that rule by dictatorial thugs is preferable to modern democracy–Hoppe’s work compares modern democracy to limited, traditional monarchies, not to dictators and absolute emperors–but it does help highlight why it’s so difficult to reform a democratic state.-Stephan Kinsella

It is not the responsibility of ‘climate realist’ scientists to prove that dangerous human-caused climate change is not happening. Rather, it is those who propose that it is, and promote the allocation of massive investments to solve the supposed ‘problem’, who have the obligation to convincingly demonstrate that recent climate change is not of mostly natural origin and, if we do nothing, catastrophic change will ensue. To date, this they have utterly failed to do.

When the suckers of corporate cock (i.e. right-wing Republicans, conservatives and Libertarians) have failed to sell real people on the bullshit lie that unions are to blame for the woes of America. As protests enter their second week in Wisconsin and with the nation joining in today, the verdict is clear: Americans aren’t buying the bullshit of the manufactured fantasy behind scapegoating unions.

Unions represent the people in them, not the ownership class. Unions provide the poor and middle class recourse against the stranglehold that the corporate establishment has on both Republicans and Democrats. Where Democrats have failed to provide healthcare, unions have provided their members with this essential life-saving benefit. Where Democrats have slacked on allowing wages to get to a point where the poor work 2-3 jobs, unions have fought to keep wages rising at the pace of inflation and cost of living increases.

I don’t like unions, personally, because I think unions are too small, too self-serving. A teacher’s unions is great if you’re a teacher, but who is fighting for the working rights of janitors? If the government actually represented the people and made a concerted effort to raise the standard of living for the average person, unions would be redundant. That unions exist at all is evidence enough of the class warfare that is being waged by the elite few against the vast majority.

While the Tea Party has proven itself to be a purely artificial, meaningless gesture by disconnected right-wing pawns, the real people’s movement is making itself known… despite only a fraction of the media coverage of the Tea Party. It shouldn’t be a shock that there was more attention given to the empty shell “movement” engineered by Fox News and represented by their aging, melanin-challenged viewers. A movement started by media outlets is bound to rely on flooding news coverage with their message.

And yet despite being underdogs, despite lacking the connections, despite a lacking the planning and media organization… more people were willing to spontaneously swarm Madison, Wisconsin to defend the only institution still functioning that prevents dickhead Republican leaders from dumping on hard-working Americans when it is wasteful and corrupt Republican policies which have gotten us into this mess.

During an unexpected moment of clarity Tuesday, open-minded man Blake Richman was suddenly struck by the grim realization that he's squandered a significant portion of his life listening to everyone's bullshit, the 38-year-old told reporters.

A visibly stunned and solemn Richman, who until this point regarded his willingness to hear out the opinions of others as a worthwhile quality, estimated that he's wasted nearly three and a half years of his existence being open to people's half-formed thoughts, asinine suggestions, and pointless, dumbfuck stories.

"Jesus Christ," said Richman, taking in the overwhelming volume of useless crap he's actively listened to over the years. "My whole life I've made a concerted effort to give people a fair shake and understand different points of view because I felt that everyone had something valuable to offer, but it turns out most of what they had to offer was complete bullshit."

According to Richman, it was just now hitting him how many hours of his life he's pissed away listening intently to nonsense about celebrity couples, how good or bad certain pens are, and why a particular sports team might have a chance this year. The husband and father of two said that every time he's felt at all put out or bored by a bullshit conversation—especially a speculative one about how bad allergy season was going to be—he should have just turned around, walked away, and gone rafting or repelling or done any of the millions of other things he's always wanted to do but never thought he had time for.

At various points throughout the day, Richman could be heard muttering to himself that he couldn't believe he was almost 40 years old…

It's being reported that the main reason people are rioting in the Middle East is high food costs. So what caused the high food costs? I'll give you a trillion guesses.

The Butcher’s Cartel is worried that the Arab rebellion will make mass murder in Iran more difficult. Poor babies! But it’s time to remember that present Middle Eastern boundaries are entirely artificial, drawn by Britain and other Western colonial powers after they had dismembered the Ottoman empire in WWI. The colonial legacy may be breaking up almost a century later. The Arabs, like all peoples, deserve freedom, and self-determination, too. The CIA, MI6, and other covert agencies will continue to commit their dirty deeds, but I have a feeling that the oppressed peoples of Iraq and Afghanistan will no longer be satisfied with US stooges, and the same with the peoples of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Bahrain, the UAE, and all the rest. Perhaps some of the great injustices of the treaty of Versailles in the East are being undone.-Lew Rockwell

When it happens (and we may be there within weeks) even the U.S. Government won't be able to fake an economic "recovery" anymore. The response by the government and old Zimbabwe Ben at the Fed may just accelerate the crash, though.

Unleaded regular is surging toward $4 per gallon again – the same highs that preceded – and which arguably triggered – the current economic catatonia. If it happens again, though, the effects are probably going to be even worse. A man on his feet can usually take a sucker punch, or at least recover from it. But if he’s already on the ground and you kick him in the head, he’s done-for.

$4 per gallon gas could do exactly that to the U.S. economy – what’s left of it.

...

Bottom line – I doubt the country can take $4 gas. It almost dropped the curtain last time – and last time, we had jobs, equity in our homes and 401ks, things to fall back on. Now, we’re facing a repeat with our backs already up against the wall. There’s nowhere to go and no help in sight.

If you haven’t taken some steps to prepare for what’s coming, understand that time is short.

Friday, February 25, 2011

Florida’s biggest Republican star, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, returned to the state Capitol Wednesday to give a pep talk to the House Republican caucus and warn that the American dream is in danger of drowning in debt.

“The math is straightforward. The federal government this year, in order to operate, will have to borrow one-and-a-half trillion dollars. – trillion dollars,” Rubio said.

“Medicare and Social Security as they currently are structured, is unsustainable,” he said to applause. “They will bankrupt themselves and ultimately bankrupt our country.”

Conducting online keyword searches for monuments, Swiss/French artist Corinne Vionnet culled thousands of tourists’ snapshots for her series Photo Opportunities. Working with a hundred photographs of a single monument, the artist weaves together small sections of the appropriated images to create each layered, ethereal structure. Famed landmarks appear to float gently in a dream-like haze of blue sky. Each construction espouses the "touristic gaze", its distorted visual referent functions as a device for memory transport by funneling many experiences into one familiar locale.

Our country was founded by individuals… for individuals. For the last approximately 100 years, things have slowly changed. We now have a powerful Federal Government that can drastically change our lives with one stroke of the pen. As “We the Little People” have been fighting between Right and Left, Republican and Democrat, rich and poor… the politicians have been slowly taking away our liberties. Most of them believe that they know what is best for us and how we should live our lives.

Who knows best what you should put into your own body, or who has the right to decide that, you or the government?

Who knows better how you should spend YOUR money, you, or the bureaucRATS in Washington?

Who knows best what type of light bulb you should use in your home (based on your decision of cost, benefit in energy savings, nature of the light you receive from a particular type of bulb, and what you're using it for and where you are using it), you or a politician?

Last April, the DOJ served a subpoena on New York Times reporter James Risen, demanding to know his source for a story he published in his 2006 book regarding a "reckless" and horribly botched CIA effort to infiltrate Iran's nuclear program. That subpoena had originally been served but was then abandoned by the Bush DOJ, but its revitalization by the Obama administration was but one of many steps taken to dramatically expand the war on whistleblowers being waged by the current President, who ran on a platform of "protecting whistleblowers"...

Another broken promise by the half-black messiah. Let's see, Barack Obama was supposed to bring us change. He was going to give us "transparency" in government. If you criticize him, however, or just ask a question about things he's doing, you must be a "myopic Obama hater".

A direct link to the CBS “project gunrunner” AKA “project gunwalker” clip about BATFE refusing to react to concerns from gun retail shops about suspicious gun buying activity. Specific cases where single buyers were transporting hundreds of guns into Mexico’s crime gangs and BATFE encouraged this illegal activity to promote the propaganda of the moment.

How much longer before another botched BATFE raid or false flag event?

This is an early report on this propaganda attempt about guns illegally crossing the border, strange how this was reported as an attempt to stop the activity and soon turned into the Government encouraging that same activity.

The only bad thing on our trip was TSA was at the Savannah train station. There were about 14 agents pulling people inside the building and corralling everyone in a roped area AFTER you got OFF THE TRAIN! This made no sense!!! Poor family in front of us! 9 year old getting patted down and wanded. They groped our people too and were very unprofessional. I am all about security, but when have you ever been harassed and felt up getting OFF a plane? Shouldn't they be doing that getting ON??? And they wonder why so many people are mad at them.

Hey, it's not about "security" people, it's about putting you in your place as one of the subjects of the ruling class (including those wonderful examples of privileged public employees, the TSA agents). It's also about conditioning you and your children (get 'em while they're young) to accept police state tactics at every point of your life. You just always submit to the state, even when you have committed no crime (and there is no reason to suspect that you have) and are just going about your daily business.

Get used to it, because unless there is an uprising (I'm serious) to demand regime change in this country, we must expect nothing less than the death of liberty and justice in America.

I’ve always considered myself a political smoker and drug user. I don’t smoke or take drugs, but I don’t politically oppose their legality. While I don’t oppose their use, I find it foolish to believe that they should go completely unregulated.

Nurses shouldn’t be allowed to smoke in the nursery of a hospital where newborns are sleeping. You shouldn’t drink if you’re about to perform surgery. You shouldn’t be allowed to smoke crack while driving (at least pull to the side of the road… you know who you are).

But all in all, I think the availability of personal vices should be unlimited, with the primary rule being, “My right to swing my fist ends at the tip of your nose.”

On May 23rd, it will no longer be legal to smoke cigarettes in New York City parks.

Now, I thought they went too far when they banned cigarettes from bars. That decision didn’t make any sense to me. Was there a problem of people saying, “Um, excuse me, I’m trying to meet someone who I can drive home drunk with so I can have unprotected sex… and you’re blowing smoke in my face!”

Frankly, I think fighting should be legal in bars. If you don’t like it, stay the fuck out of bars. I don’t go to bars, and I am in no way oppressed by it. I don’t start a campaign to legally mandate better lighting, more food options, and kitsch on the walls, thereby turning every bar in the country into Applebee’s. I don’t like bars, so I don’t go in them. It’s not calculus.

Now, while I think you should be able to have drunken fist fights in bars, I almost get the NYC ban on smoking in parks. Almost. I’ve been to NYC a few times, and the parks are about the only place you can go to escape the ever-present scent of car exhaust, homeless people, and food carts (I’ve never been so nauseated and hungry at the same time before). I don’t know if smoking in parks was ruining the whole experience for some people, and I can’t pretend to care what goes on in NYC, so I won’t bother commenting on it further.

But there is a rising backlash against this legislation. As one can imagine, it is largely right-wing Republicans who oppose it, but I believe the most vocal group in opposition to these types of measures are Libertarians.

Which brings me to San Francisco Happy Meals. Not long ago, the City by the Bay decided to put firm restrictions on the content of any meal served with a toy (regardless of the type of restaurant, McDonald’s, fast food or otherwise). In the end, you can get a healthy kid’s meal with a toy or an unhealthy kid’s meal without a toy.

I don’t know if this legislation was the result of spineless West Coast parents being unable to tell their kids “No,” or if there was a problem in regards to a lack of healthy options available. I really don’t care, because (again) I don’t live there.

When the Happy Meal fervor was still fresh news, I said (and I’ll point it out again now that NYC is banning smoking in parks): why are “small government” advocates so opposed to the actions of… well… a small government?

It’s not a mystery, I don’t have to explain it to you. It’s not difficult to grasp the fact that “small government” doesn’t actually mean anything, and that it’s merely a slogan for opposing federal measures that are disliked on other grounds. So, why is this canard so often repeated as a founding principle among a group that routinely opposes the actions of small governing bodies?

Small government is implied to mean a local government more in tune with the individuals making up that community. The idea behind lionizing “small government” is that it’s easier to govern a state or city in a way that is approved by its citizens, much easier than catering to the myriad of needs across a nation of over 300 million people (I would argue it’s not… but I’ll get to that later).

But there is a glaring fallacy in the assessment I have presented: simply saying that one is in favor of smaller government does not mean that one is required to agree with everything a smaller government does. I support not only a national government, but a global one spanning every person on Earth… though that doesn’t mean a global government measure which issued a law banning black people from having children would be something I support.

In short, agreeing with a system of government does not mean one supports everything about a particular government’s agenda. With so many small governments across the country, it would be hard imagine a libertarian being in favor of every single measure that each town and state managed to come up with.

Kennesaw, Georgia may not be a town you have heard of, but many people outside of the US recognize it as the place that has mandated that all heads of household must own a gun.

*takes a deep breath*

You can choose to turn the comments into a gun “debate” (see also: circle jerk), but I will ignore anything discussing guns. The point here isn’t whether guns make anyone safer… it’s that there is a government mandate for you to purchase something (which is the very thing people who oppose the questionable healthcare bill from last year claim is tyrannical).

Meanwhile, South Dakota and many other states seek to turn their female population into concubines, nothing more than birth factories who are at the whim of any rapist. Decide what happens with your own body? Not a chance when it comes to abortion. Hell, they want it to be legal to kill an abortion doctor. Where are the Libertarians in these battles?

Another definition of “small government” is simply the belief that government should get off our backs and stop telling us what to do… supposedly. When it comes to something like gun ownership or abortion, these right-wingers abandon this principle of government neutrality and non-intervention because the government is, in their perception, correct.

Funny… it’s only oppression when left-wing policies are enacted by small governments. When right-wing policies are shoved down our throats… it’s just plain, good-old fashioned common [non]sense.

Of course, when you do any real research and find that nearly all Libertarians vote Republican (if they vote at all), that the Libertarian party is co-funded by most of the same pro-crony, big-business interests, and that “Libertarian” candidates like Ron Paul are actually just abortion hating Republicans who vote along party lines like every other right-winger…

You start to realize that Libertarians are the “New Coke” to the Republican’s “Coca-Cola Classic;” like New Coke, Libertarians won’t be around for long (only until they lose their usefulness and their cover is blown), and like New Coke… it’s all a marketing scheme to just get you to buy another Coke product.

[As a side note, I wanted to include the Tea Party in my drink analogy, but the only beverage I could manage to associate it with was whole milk… nothing else was fatty or white enough. I know, “tea” is already a drink, but can you honestly picture any of those people sitting down in a café with a cup, a saucer, and a scone? Maybe southern sweet tea…]

My point is this: tyranny has nothing to do with the size of a government. Tyranny is not stopped by dividing the world into quarrelling sub-groups that wish to oppress their citizens in their own unique ways. Unlike a penis, it’s not the size of a government that counts: it’s how you use it. And before you ask, yes, I worded that correctly. I don’t care what your dad told you about the “motion of the ocean,” he was just trying to make you feel better.

A bad policy is a bad policy whether at the global, national, state, city, or even household level. Whenever I hear people going on and on about how small government is superior, I can’t help but think of another concept practiced by tyrants: “divide and conquer.”

“Project Gunwalker.” That title is a parody of the “Project Gunrunner” name the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) has assigned to its southwest border initiative on U.S. guns going to the Mexican drug criminals, and refers to sourced information that the bureau has intentionally—and importantly, criminally, and with management cognizance—allowed guns to be transported across the border...

Situational irony as hard-core march by liberals ridiculing that sold-out whore and hack Beck for pointing out hard-core socialists are involved. Not a one aware that the left and right are simply tools.

The House passed the repeal last Saturday 63-37. Get this, all 63 yes votes from Republicans - only 5 GOP elephants joining the Democrats’ no’s.

The Republicans may be marginally better than the Democrats on some things, but they are much worse on many others. I do wonder if those Democrats voting against repeal in Montana realize they are pro-nullification, and are in favor, in this case, of nullifying Obama's Federal drug laws. Hilarious!

And I'd bet all of those hypocrites "concerned" about children using pot don't give a damn about the fact that over 25% of American children and teens are on an ongoing Big Pharma drug prescription.

The real rebels in the Slave States were not the slave owners who seceded or the uneducated white people they convinced to fight for them, but the black and white people who staged armed slave revolts and ran the underground railroad.

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

The stakes have seldom been higher. With the unemployment rate still above 9%, and federal debt at record levels, this latest error by the monetary authorities is likely to be the most costly since the Great Inflation of the 1970s. Monetary instability will slow employment growth and further erode confidence in government at the same time that higher interest rates will add billions of dollars to the interest cost on the national debt. Yet, failure to act in a timely basis will lead to an even greater crisis.

When it arrives, the Federal Reserve and its defenders will call it “cost-push” inflation and blame it on economic growth, the weather, Arab sheiks, China, and perhaps greedy companies and labor unions.

The actual cause of the looming crisis is the same as the cause of the Great Inflation of the 1970’s: a too easy monetary policy that has devalued the dollar by 40% against gold during the past two years.

Fed up with what he views as crappy treatment from the TSA, the owner of a restaurant near Seattle-Tacoma International Airport has decided to put all TSA agents on his No-Eat List.

"We have posted signs on our doors basically saying that they aren't allowed to come into our business," one employee tells travel journalist Christopher Elliott. "We have the right to refuse service to anyone."

Here's the problem with public employee unions: There is no right to collectively bargain to steal more money from my paycheck! This doesn't mean that I'm on the side of the Republicans in Wisconsin, either. The union movement, after decades of state-capitalist assault, is virtually dead in the private sector, with only 6.9% of private sector workers belonging to a union (you'll ofter here a larger number, around 12%, but that figure combines public and private sector employees). Over half of all union members are public employees, with 36.2% of government workers belonging to unions. This is where all the growth in unions has taken place. While in the private sector wages are stagnant even though productivity is up, in the public sector productivity is not an issue. What are most government workers producing, except more bureaucracy? Teachers unions obviously don't want the productive even among their own class to earn more based on productivity, as witness their opposition to things like merit pay. Further, as a whole, they are a terribly unproductive lot:

Two-thirds of the eighth graders in Wisconsin public schools cannot read proficiently according to the U.S. Department of Education, despite the fact that Wisconsin spends more per pupil in its public schools than any other state in the Midwest.

But we're supposed to sympathize with the parasites in the streets of Madison, as if they were just another group of workers demanding their rights be protected, and just compensation be awarded. But, even on an objective measurement in their field, these teachers (one of the major groups of unionized government tax eaters) fail. How long would a private business survive if it was getting that level of performance from its employees?

Do a simple thought experiment to see that by the very nature of our current economic system, no government employee can ever be "productive". A private business has to generate income and then make a profit in order to pay its workers. How does government pay its "workers"? By siphoning off some of that productivity from the private sector through taxation. Imagine all government employees suddenly joining the private workforce, and assume they can find employment (hard to imagine, I know). It's easy to see where the money comes from in that case; the private business has to provide a product or service to the market place that people are willing to pay for. But imagine for a moment that a larger and larger percentage of the population is drawing a government paycheck, and more and more people work for government (actually happening, with job growth occurring for Federal workers - over 100,000 new permanent Federal Government employees added in the last two years). Then imagine that we all suddenly work for government at one level or another. You can't do it, because, who would pay us? Without a private sector to tax, there is no way for the government to sustain itself or pay its employees, except by printing money, which leads to Zimbabwe inflation.

Of course, it's even worse for the states (like Wisconsin) because they can't print money, and borrowing to fund deficits is often no longer an option. The only way you can continue to pay higher and higher wages and benefits to public employees is to raise taxes on the private sector, reducing the very productivity that government draws from to fund its parasite class. If the public employee unions win, (supported by the likes of AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, because private sector unions are dead, and the only way to grow is with public employees) it won't mean a renewed union movement across the board, only the confirmation that we have a new privileged class that will continue to suck private employees dry through taxation, and earn far more than most private sector workers ever will, with better benefits and more job security.

Now, if we go deeper into the issues brought into light by what's happening in the state of Wisconsin, there are other things that aren't so cut and dried. The Republicans are no angels in this:

“We are going to bring fiscal sanity back to this great nation,”-Tim Phillips, president of Americans for Prosperity.

What Mr. Phillips did not mention was that his Virginia-based nonprofit group, whose budget surged to $40 million in 2010 from $7 million three years ago, was created and financed in part by the secretive billionaire brothers Charles G. and David H. Koch.

State records also show that Koch Industries, their energy and consumer products conglomerate based in Wichita, Kan., was one of the biggest contributors to the election campaign of Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, a Republican who has championed the proposed cuts.

It's clear the Koch-effort is to completely break the back of government unions. One has to ask, "Why?"

For most libertarians the evil is the government employing these people for these government jobs in the first place, not that they are union members once they become government employees. To be sure, no good is coming out of these people operating as part of a union, but the real problem is that these people should be in the private sector in the first place. Where's the Koch call for real libertarian solutions such as ending government involvement in education, healthcare and charity. Where's the Koch call to End the Fed?

The Koch effort simply appears to be an attempt to support establishment Republicans. Breaking government unions helps crack a Democrat power base. But who are these Republicans that would fill the power void? On FOX news, this past Sunday, Wisconsin Governor Walker said he does not want to fire any government employees. The sponsor of an anti-union bill in Florida, Senator Thrasher, was hailed for being responsible for directing taxpayer money for expansion of a government university.

...

How can any of these Republicans can be considered anything close to anti-big government? Why would the supposed libertarian Koch brothers be supporting actions that would do nothing but create further strength for this Republican establishment? Why?

Almost daily some moron tells me that the reason they know the Bible is true for a 100% fact is because they have a "personal relationship with Jesus Christ". I'm gonna have to go ahead and call bullshit on this one. I know Christians love to parrot stupid shit they've heard others say, like how their God is a "Living God" (if he is alive, where the fuck is he at? Introduce me!) or how humans have been "Fearfully and Wonderfully made" (why does everything revolve around fear with you people?)

However, at some point, you just have to stand up and point out to them that there "Christian Catch Phrases" are nothing more than mindless gibberish that doesn't mean anything. Just like the entirety of their religion.

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

It seems like a lot of people overreacted to my last post (along with some amusing psychoanalyzing), which was in jest. I'm obviously not a misogynist and don't hate women. I'm sure everyone here lives a perfectly celibate, puritan lifestyle. I mean seriously, relax dudes. What's the point of a blog if you can't occasionally vent about random stuff?

With the fiscal crap hitting the fan in a few states of the Union, I’d thought it’d be a good time to go over something here that I find near and dear: personal finance for politicians. Originally, I thought I’d use the word dummies, but even dummies will stop spending money after a short while.

Take Wisconsin, for example. Seriously, take the stupid cheeseheads. I’m still mad that they beat the Steelers. OK, now that I’ve got that out of my system (wasn’t hard considering I’m not a huge football fan), I want to highlight how the state has to run a balanced budget. This is a large part of their budgetary process. If only the Founding Fathers had the foresight to codify this concept into the United States Constitution…

In any case, Wisconsin is one of the several states that requires a balanced budget. But let’s examine what exactly that means in real people terms. If you sit down to do a budget, which I hope you do every month, do you find yourself running a deficit each month? If you did, are you taking steps to ensure that this deficit is taken care of quickly by cutting spending or by getting an extra job?

The truth is, most American households do not run a deficit in their budget on a regular basis. At least, that’s my speculation. I know that we do have an overall negative savings rate, but at the same time, I doubt many of us our spending more than we make on a consistent basis. I know I am not.

You see, personal finance is not all that complicated. You make money and you plan on where every dollar you earn goes. If you find that there is something you can’t pay for, then you put it off and pay for it when you can. You make the necessities a priority, which are food, clothing, shelter, transportation, and utilities. And if you need more money for one item and your income hasn’t risen, then you simply shift money from one area to another.

There is good reason for this. By balancing a budget, you ensure that any shortfalls can be met without too much discomfort or wallet busting efforts. I recently had to replace my entire computer (I may blog about that harrowing experience later) and because I budget properly, I still had a surplus at the end of the month. And I am by no means anywhere close to being rich myself. But replacing the computer, which runs a few hundred dollars, wasn’t something that broke my financial situation because I plan things out ahead of time.

Now think of a rich kid. I’m not talking about a person who works 12-14 hours a day, 6-7 days a week and makes more than I’ll probably ever make in my lifetime. I’m talking about some rich kid who inherited a ton of wealth and does nothing but parties all the time. There are a few of those kind of people out there, rare as they are. I admit that I do envy them a bit, but at the same time I find it is amazing how they are able to spend their parents’ wealth like there’s no tomorrow.

It has been said that politicians spend like drunken sailors but I argue that politicians spend like spoiled rich brats because at least drunken sailors have their own money to spend. Now across this country, moderately fiscally responsible people have been elected and they are looking to cut spending and reign in the shopping sprees that their predecessors have racked up. This is not a criticism of any party because both parties spent the money they took from us like the prodigal sons they were.

So now, most state and local governments have to roll up their sleeves and either cut spending or raise taxes. Unfortunately, raising taxes is only a short-term solution as the people who will most likely be taxed, the working rich, have the means to leave. So the only option is to cut spending. Anything else is entirely implausible and will only serve to ruin things for everyone, rather than a few people.

This is why I am disgusted with the government unions who are demanding to keep money the government doesn’t have. There’s no more money. The economy is contracting and isn’t recovering in the areas that count (I’ll give you a hint: it’s isn’t government spending that counts). So when your employers, the mayors and governors, say that they can’t pay you, they aren’t being greedy. They are exhibiting common sense and trying to bring some sanity back to the government’s spending habits. And you know, it may not hurt to have to spend your own money for your own retirement and medical insurance like the rest of us plebes.

I’m deliberately more likely to simply fly off the handle when posting on SE these days. It occurred to me that despite wasting hours of time composing carefully worded expositions detailing my opinions, I can expect SE regulars to ignore what I posted and write between the lines what they want to read.

I liken it to getting all dressed up in a tuxedo to participate in a rodeo. There’s no point, really, because a civilized and elegant appearance to begin with will still result in me getting dirty. I don’t mind playing in the mud and cattle dung with you guys, but I will now dress appropriately.

I’ve also taken to not bother watching videos posted or fully reading all posts I comment on here, because I figured I would return the favor.

Carry on, shit faces.

PS: Please keep rating stuff low (I can’t climax unless I get below 2 stars with four or five votes), but try submitting a comment. I know you guys are cowards, but come on you fucking pussies… it’s the internet. What am I going to do, reach through the computer screen and bitch slap you for being stupid? It says a lot about a group when they will wordlessly disapprove (or approve, for that matter) but not contribute a thought, and it leads me to think you lack any.

And not just my posts. Frankly, I would rather see more comments on Nikk’s stuff than mine. How many dozens of things does he post that get star ratings but no comments (or one completely off-topic one from me)?

My friend was just in a bad relationship where some psycho-hose bitch couldn’t handle the fact he was sick and wanted to be alone for a night. He’s gotten so down, he’s taken to posting about it online, where people who barely know him (and even have the gall to call themselves his “friend,” despite hardly ever interacting with him) are bickering over the very nature of masculinity, without any concern for his situation. So, I was hoping you could play the Queen classic, “Somebody to Love” for Cork, to let him know we’re rooting for him to find his next love.

Also, any plans to do any more voice over work as Shaggy? I was kind of surprised to find out you were still alive, but I think I was confusing you with Dick Clark.

- Ginx

Okay Ginx… where to begin. Dick Clark is also still alive, I just voiced Shaggy in 2009 on the direct-to-DVD release of “Scooby-Doo and the Samurai Sword,” and that is a horrible song request. I’ll change the tune but keep the band. Here’s your long distance dedication:

Not only is our money being spent on drone strikes to take out low level militants while Osama Bin Laden runs free, but our drone strikes are a major sore spot for relations between the US, Pakistan and Yemen. Firedoglake's Marcy Wheeler weighs in.

Killing the wrong people? No, the United States government loves murder, is a mass murderer, and its Great Leader even makes jokes about murder:

"The Jonas Brothers are here. (Applause.) They're out there somewhere. Sasha and Malia are huge fans. But, boys, don't get any ideas. (Laughter.) I have two words for you -- predator drones. (Laughter.) You will never see it coming. (Laughter.) You think I'm joking. (Laughter.)" -- Barack Obama at the White House Correspondents Association Dinner, May 1, 2010

The most serious problems with their deployment, however, arise from the criteria for determining the targets against which they are properly deployed. In the language of artillery, sometimes targets are designated as “free fire” zones, where any human within that vicinity is considered to be a legitimate target. That works when the enemy is clearly defined and geographically prescribed. In the case of guerilla (or “irregular”) warfare, however, there are neither uniforms to identify the enemy nor territorial boundaries to distinguish them, as is the case in Iraq and Afghanistan, where virtually any group of individuals, no matter how innocuous they may turn out to be, tends to be regarded as “fair game” for drone attack. In military language, of course, it’s all readily excusable as “collateral damage”.

How many wedding parties are we going to take out because the drone saw group behavior that it had been programmed to hit? How often do we have sufficient information to know that we are actually targeting insurgents and not innocents? Surely I am not alone in finding our actions repugnant when I read, “Over 700 killed in 44 drone strikes in 2009” taking out 5 intended targets —140 to 1 — and 123 civilians were killed for 3 al-Qaeda in January 2010. The headlines are ubiquitous: “CIA chief in Pakistan exposed. Top spy received death threats; U.S. drones kill 54”, Wisconsin State Journal (18 December 2010), where the American government claims, just as it did in Vietnam, that every dead body was a ”suspected militant”: none were innocent men, women, or children. Even The Washington Post (21 February 2011) seems to perceive that something is wrong with killing so many people and hitting so few targets.

We are now invading Pakistani airspace in our relentless determination to take out those who oppose us. From the point of view of the countries that we have invaded and occupied, they might be more aptly described as “freedom fighters”. Since we invaded these countries in violation of international law, the UN Charter and the US Constitution, we appear to be committing crimes against humanity. And the risk posed by our own technology is now extending to the USA itself. A recent article found in Software 26th August 2010 12:26 GMT, “ROBOT KILL-CHOPPER GOES ROGUE above Washington DC!” by Lewis Page, describes a perceived threat to the nation’s capitol as attributable to “software error”. No deaths resulted from this infraction, but perhaps the next time a mistake of this kind will lead to the deaths of members of Congress or of “The First Family” on a picnic outing in the Rose Garden, which will make for spectacular headlines. Yet we don’t even pause to ask ourselves, “What’s wrong with collateral damage?”-On the Ethical Conduct of Warfare: Predator Drones

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To be an individualist and libertarian is to understand that no one, anywhere, should ever be aggressed against by anyone, and that the state is the principal form of institutionalized aggression in our world.— Anthony Gregory

"Political tags, such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth, are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire."-- Robert A. Heinlein

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants."--Thomas Jefferson

"Our Bible reveals to us the character of our god with minute and remorseless exactness... It is perhaps the most damnatory biography that exists in print anywhere. It makes Nero an angel of light and leading by contrast." - Mark Twain

"The Bible tells us to be like God, and then on page after page it describes God as a mass murderer. This may be the single most important key to the political behavior of Western Civilization." - Robert Anton Wilson